The following post is a contribution from Luke Wilson on his experience as an analyst intern at Source One.

This past spring I started to get serious about looking for
an internship for the summer after my sophomore year at the University of
Chicago. With economics and environmental studies as my focus, I was seeking an
opportunity to gain industry experience in a corporate environment. I found
Source One’s internship posting on my university’s online job board, and after
a couple of interviews, I had landed myself an internship for the second half
of the summer which I have since continued into the fall semester of my junior
year.

Source One has a diverse offering of services, and that was
certainly reflected in the work that was delegated to me.

Over the first few weeks, my work primarily consisted of
routine data entry, providing me with a foundational understanding Source One's
strategic sourcing process and the type of spend data Source One's cost
reduction analysts review. As I gained
more and more experience, I was given more responsibility. More recently I’ve
supported marketing benchmark initiatives for a client looking for venues to
host their yearly regional trade shows.

Much of my work has been focused on one of Source One's
largest clients. Learning about all different segments and areas of the
client’s business has been very enlightening. I am in an undergraduate business
program and have taken classes at our business school, but working for that
client has given me more of a holistic understanding on how business decisions
are made than anything I’ve learned on campus. Supporting a number of strategic
sourcing projects for the client, I’ve gained hands-on experience collecting
and providing the necessary information that will be used to make decisions for
a number of business units including Marketing and Supply Chain.

I’ve really enjoyed qualitative research tasks, whether it
is finding alternative suppliers, categorizing potential alternative suppliers,
or researching the market in general for a specific product or capability. I
have become a master at optimizing my Google searches. Trying to find watch
photographers in Switzerland has been my favorite research task so far. I've
even used the French skills I picked up while fulfilling my language
requirement on campus to communicate with abroad vendors. There are also more
routine tasks like data entry, that some might find less interesting, however I
personally find digitizing invoice data very rewarding and relaxing. Setting up
excel formulas to check my own work and finding interesting industry podcasts
to listen to help make tasks like these go by faster, and more efficiently.

The office culture at Source One is very flat, in that I
have been able to work closely with almost everyone in the office, regardless
of title. From analysts to project managers to vice presidents, no one at Source
One has ever been too important or too busy to hop on the phone with me and
offer help. I feel just as close with the senior analysts as I do with my
fellow interns. Team-building events like the Chicago office ping-ping
tournament last Friday, which I won handily as an intern, also help to
reinforce the friendly and collaborative atmosphere.

I’ve been here for three and a half months now, and I’m
happier than ever that I chose to pursue an internship at Source One. In the
future, I'm interested in using my analytical and problem solving skills to
help solve environmental issues from an economics perspective. My time at
Source One has been helpful in figuring out how I can apply my future degree,
and the skills I've learned.

Strategic Sourceror

StrategicSourceror.com is a leading industry blog that focuses on providing news, tips, and best practices for a variety of procurement, supply chain, and strategic sourcing categories.

This site is owned and operated by Source One Management Services, LLC; the leading consultancy providing strategic sourcing resources, procurement advisory consulting and procurement support services to hundreds of companies.

Continue to visit StrategicSourceror for your supply chain and procurement news and to see the latest tips, advise, and rants from the analysts, consultants, and category managers from Source One.

Thank you for your readership!

About Source One

Source One Management Services, LLC is a leading procurement services provider. Since 1992, Source One has been providing companies in all industries with sourcing services including BPO, Benchmarking, Spend Analysis, Category Support, and RFX Management.